Tim H’s Techdirt Profile

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Tim H’s Comments

Mayday is not about restricting political spending. It is about citizen-funded campaigns - added citizen-directed public funding, not restricting other spending.

It's a fair concern that the establishment parties would try to rig any new system, but you can see for yourself whether the proposals Mayday supports do. You can read the text of the bills, or go to any level of detail you desire, here: http://reform.to/#/reforms

The point is simply that it is hopefully not necessary to outbid them. We still have a formal democracy, if not a fully functioning one. There are diminishing returns to big money. We just need enough money to have a fighting chance.

Sorry if I have already, quoted this here, but I am interested in your response in particular: "Some worry that there’s something improper about using a corrupted system to achieve corruption reform. Don’t we dirty our hands if we use the money of the few to achieve a democracy for the many?

"I understand that concern. I don’t agree with it. One might have said it was wrong to use the racist system of American democracy to bring about the rights of citizenship for African-Americans. I wouldn’t have said that. Or one might have said it was wrong to use a sexist political system to bring about a democracy in which women have the right to vote. I wouldn’t have said that either. In my view, we work with the democracy we have to make a more perfect democracy. And the only way we’ll convince America that winning is possible is if we show America we’ve got the resources to win."

Thanks, I really appreciate you taking the time to look at the plan. I disagree with your analysis, however. The difference in this initiative is that it focuses like a laser on citizen-funded campaigns. That subverts the current narrative of a rigidly polarized debate over whether political spending should be treated as speech under the Constitution. At the very least, it will force opponents of fundamental reform to invest heavily in new messaging strategies. In the best case, it catches them off guard completely and they lose control of the narrative. In the most likely case, they are on their game, but we have a fighting chance because they have an uphill battle against a clear, focused, plausible plan for citizen-funded campaigns. Now that Mayday is funded, however, debate over whether it can succeed is mostly wasted breath. We will see in the next few months whether they can succeed. They are going to do pre and post polling to attempt to demonstrate conclusively that they had decisive impacts in up to 5 House races and that they increased the salience of systematic corruption in Congress for those races. Why don't we table this debate for five months and see what happens?

The next thing taught in an introductory economics course is that there is such a thing as a natural monopoly (e.g. utility companies). This is where, without any government interference, there would be a monopoly. So there is a good argument for government to regulate such monopolies and keep their prices lower than the "free market" would have them.

Another thing you may have learned in a slightly more advanced economics course is that knowledge is something that the free market does not provide the right incentives for. If I put years into inventing something, someone else can steal my idea as soon as I make it public, leaving me with no compensation for my research. The temporary monopolies granted by patents and copyrights are a response to this problem with the free market. (Granted, there are abuses of patents and copyrights and there is a serious need for reform. Also, there are alternatives such as grants, prizes, and government- or foundation-funded fellowships for researchers. But we need to understand the basic economics, first.)

For anyone interested in the actual plan, all the details are here: https://mayday.us/the-plan/ There's nothing magic about it. I'd be interested in your thoughts, art guerrilla, if you have anything to say about the actual plan.

(Like sheep, we are social animals. We are actually far more imitative than sheep and even monkeys, contrary to the stereotype.) Setting that aside, who's more like mindless, docile sheep: people who have digested Lessig's analysis, agree with him, and support his initiative as the best thing going or the huge mass of apathetic people whining to anyone who will listen about our government but not doing anything about it?

p.s. The flawed health care reform is a great example of why we need to fix the way elections are funded, as Lessig has argued repeatedly: “Let’s say we are talking about healthcare: money guaranteed that single-payer health insurance was not on the table. There could be nothing more fundamental to that bill than that.” http://harvardmagazine.com/2012/07/a-radical-fix-for-the-republic

You can accuse Lessig of many things, but it's hard to accuse a Harvard Law Professor of populism. No, I do not want populism, per se, defined as "any of various, often antiestablishment or anti-intellectual political movements or philosophies that offer unorthodox solutions or policies and appeal to the common person rather than according with traditional party or partisan ideologies." That's a mix of good and bad. I do definitely want a democratic republic, though, defined as "a state in which the supreme power rests in the body of citizens entitled to vote for officers and representatives responsible to them."

Let's see, what should I trust more, careful reports analyzing the empirical evidence on whether fundamental reform has an impact (http://www.demos.org/publication/fresh-start-impact-public-campaign-financing-connecticut) or some random anonymous coward's analogy to Harry Potter. So hard to know what to think when there is such conflicting evidence!

What do you say to this argument that an anonymous coward made a couple years ago:

"I don't really see term limits as a solution. If anything, that could make the revolving door problem even worse. People will enter Congress not thinking "I will be working for this institution in thirty years", instead, they will enter thinking "Who will I work for when I'm done working for Congress and how can I do them favors while in Congress". and you would have a lot more people who have worked for Congress (which is harder to publicly track), a Congress that regulates many industries, what, are you going to force all these people to never work for any industry?"

And term limits for friends, and term limits for protege's? Or we could just face up to the fact that this is an imperfect solution to having "a near permanent running class"? Yes, term limits, non-partisan redistricting, maybe more seats in Congress, jungle primaries, instant runoff voting...these are all ideas worth trying, but they don't rise to the urgency of the central, root problem, the dominance of big money. If anyone has time for a little more detail on how Lessig has convinced me and so many others that the way we fund elections is the #1 issue we need to focus on, I recommend this 45 min talk: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AxCo2bE9Gtk&feature=youtu.be&t=27s It's going to give you the stats, case studies, insightful analogies, and hope - the same things that made me believe that it *is* possible to restore our democratic republic.

I do "know all the details" and I'm taking on all comers. Please, go ahead and give me your best excuse for not contributing, despite being one of the privileged few in our country to know about this earnest, cross-partisan initiative?

"Some worry that there’s something improper about using a corrupted system to achieve corruption reform. Don’t we dirty our hands if we use the money of the few to achieve a democracy for the many?

"I understand that concern. I don’t agree with it. One might have said it was wrong to use the racist system of American democracy to bring about the rights of citizenship for African-Americans. I wouldn’t have said that. Or one might have said it was wrong to use a sexist political system to bring about a democracy in which women have the right to vote. I wouldn’t have said that either. In my view, we work with the democracy we have to make a more perfect democracy. And the only way we’ll convince America that winning is possible is if we show America we’ve got the resources to win."